W520 4270CTOCore i7 2960XM (Must have gotten the last one because it dropped off the site as an option the day after I placed the order.4GB 1333Mhz (pulled and installed my own 4 x 4GB Kingston Hyper X 1866Mhz DIMMs)320GB WD Black (pulled and installed my own Intel 520 Series 480GB SSD)nVidea Quadro 2000M1920x1080 MatteIntel Ultimate-N 6300

W520 4270CTOCore i7 2960XM (Must have gotten the last one because it dropped off the site as an option the day after I placed the order.4GB 1333Mhz (pulled and installed my own 16GB Kingston Hyper X 1866Mhz DIMMs)320GB WD Black (pulled and installed my own Intel 520 Series 480GB SSD)nVidea Quadro 2000M1920x1080 MatteIntel Ultimate-N 6300

Very nice. just got a similar machine today (W520 w/ 2860QM) from work with 1000M, 8gb RAM and 160gb Intel SSD. Congrats!

You almost got the best of everything that you could possibly put together in a computer. Why not 32GB ram?

Get tpfancontrol, set it on manual and 8, and then get IntelBurnTest, and tell us how many GFlops that thing can produce. Try it with and without hyperthreading enabled. Man o man do I ever wish I could have that machine for a day to test.

How is that sandforce 2281 Intel drive? Have you run any benchmarks with that? What are your WEI scores?

Cant find 32GB ram @ 1866Mhz... would be cool tho.This is my first sata III HDD. Dont have much to compare it to. I do get the 40sec warm boot issue with it which leads me to believe that the issue is Sata III related.I run TPFanControl on my T61p to keep the X9000 in check, but havn't seemed to need it yet on the W520.

Why? Does the BIOS restrict RAM speed? My current i7-2820QM W520 has the 1600 MHz Hyper-X installed and runs like a charm. It will soon be going to a family member and I will be in the market for a new machine... Possibly an XM W520. (Or IB W530 perhaps?) Wondering if Lenovo overrides the SB capabilities?

Sorry to bump in here with a few questions... if I configure a W520 with an i7-2860QM Processor (2.50 GHz, 8MB L3), what is the max amount of RAM it will handle...? Also, Im reading here that RAM for this machine can go as fast as 1866Mhz, is it therefore possible to configure this machine with the mentioned CPU with 32GB 1866Mhz chips...?

Why? Does the BIOS restrict RAM speed? My current i7-2820QM W520 has the 1600 MHz Hyper-X installed and runs like a charm. It will soon be going to a family member and I will be in the market for a new machine... Possibly an XM W520. (Or IB W530 perhaps?) Wondering if Lenovo overrides the SB capabilities?

I suppose I must be wrong. I do not have a 2960XM to play with, and I was under the assumption that SB capabilities were only 1600MHz.

Everyone who is trying to get 1866MHz memory for their Core i7-2xxx based systems... you are wasting your money. Your system will run just as well at 1600MHz as it will on 1866MHz, for a lot less money (and better availability of components too).

Not doubting the above test results and the conclusion.... but I do have a question. Why would the Intel documentation quoted by the other posted say that the max RAM clock speed is slower than what the above tests show..... ???????????????????????